I don't think there's been official word on this, but I believe it's the second scenario.

I think normal critters and wild pets share similar spawning "nodes", and after killing one, it allows the possible spawning of the other. Of course it's up to RNG, and killing a critter could just cause another critter to spawn, rather than a battle pet lol.

If someone's actually seen a regular critter suddenly become battle-able, I'd love to hear about it. I can picture a little squirrel wandering around and "prepping" for battle. Once it's psyched itself up enough, it suddenly says "I'm ready!" and a green paw print pops up above its head. XD

Good question. I'm curious about this too, and I know how it works for some cases, but I don't know if it's the same for all cases.

Your first option is generally not true. At least for primary-only spawns such as minfernal, spawn of onyxia, scourged whelpling, etc. etc.: they pop into being as a battle-able pet. There is never a non-battleable version of these, and they spawn with a little green paw over their head.

Your second option is sometimes true, but I don't know how general this is. Molten Hatchling is the best case I can point to. These can exist as non-battleable critters; they always live in the lava pools in Searing Gorge; and they share spawn points with Lava Crabs. Therefore if you kill all the Lava Crabs (including non-battleable critters), and wait for the lava pools to respawn their critters, you will again get a random assortment of Molten Hatchlings and Lava Crabs, and some will be battle pets and some not.

However I have never seen a case where killing a Lava Crab caused a non-battleable Molten Hatchling to become battleable. Rather, I believe that the game is populating the lava pools with pets at some rate, until they are full: and if you empty them, they can start filling again. Another example is Therazane's Throne in Deepholm: it's crawling with Amethyst and Topaz Shale Hatchlings, and if you battle one, another will spawn by the time you've finished.

Does this mean that battle pet spawns are linked, in general? I've seen many people state that this is true, e.g. you have to kill tainted rats/moths to get minfernals to spawn, because Felwood has a certain quota of battle pets and it's being taken up by the rats and moths. I would love to know if this were correct, but I haven't seen any evidence for linked spawns outside of the small local examples I described.

I am almost 100% sure that your first scenario is not true. As I have never in all my 5000 plus battles, as well as running around mutilating poor critters to get battle pets to spawn, ever seen a critter spontaneously change into a battle pet. It always happens that killing critters has a chance to spawn a battle pet.

Also, where rat and bunny critters and rat and bunny battle pets exist, just killing rat critters will not force rat battle pets to spawn. Nor will killing rat critters make bunny critters spawn. Nor will killing rats of any type (critter or battle pet) make bunnies of any type (critter or battle pet) spawn.Killing any non combat animal, critter or battle pet only provides the CHANCE that any one of the available choices in a given area will spawn, be it bunny or rat critter, or bunny or rat battle pet.

Now I hope all of your little heads are filled will delightful images of bunnies and nightmarish images of rats...Sleep well!

I saw a group of 4 critters despawn at the exact same time ditto spawned as battleable. It was Otters on Vale of Eternal Blossoms. I had been running around killing critters to get battlepets to spawn. I was very surprised it happened like this. I dont kill normal critters anymore.

(Only those area-restriched one, that shares for sure; like the Lava Crab and Snowshoe hare) I dont have and opinion about the area restricted, that only exist as battlepets - been pretty lucky with the rare catches of those, so I havenot had the need to know.) I think there is at least 3 ways of spawning: as Poofah stated above: where it respawns as a battlepet sometimes, where it spawns as battlepet only and where it despawns to make room for battlespawn (maybe other way around too).

But when one is a normal one, that just changes, or where critter and battlepets are linked, I have no say on. Dunno anything about the pool of battlepets in a zone either. I think they just have a random spawntimer, and sometimes it is the same time as people kill other pets in the zone. I just wanted to share what I saw; how critters dissapeared and battlepets appered in the same second - they just like faded away, while the others spawned in the same spot.

Last edited by Lisanette on November 17th, 2012, 3:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

I definitely welcome more input and experiences. If this mechanic is not well understood yet, perhaps the more we share our accounts, the more we can define it.

I will share how I came to question this mechanic.

The Irradiated Roach. Tons of them fluttering about near the green pools, and plenty more luring in the underground 'Station' outside the Gnomer portals. There are so many running around I started killing the common critters to see if the battle-able pet would spawn. It did not seem to have any effect. Then I noticed that I was not the only one there, so it might have been working, but someone else getting them first. :/

It left me with more questions than ideas.

So I came here, didn't see anything started on the subject, and figured I would start something.

I have on 2 different occasions noticed the phenomenom Lisanette mentioned.That being a critter despawning and a battlepet instantly respawning. One of the two was a squirrel of which I forgot the location, the second one I know I saw happen, but can't remember where nor which pet it was.

However, most pets I've seen so far have followed scenario 2, where killing non-battleable critters gives a higher chance on a respawn of a battlepet.

Slerm wrote:The Irradiated Roach. Tons of them fluttering about near the green pools, and plenty more luring in the underground 'Station' outside the Gnomer portals. There are so many running around I started killing the common critters to see if the battle-able pet would spawn. It did not seem to have any effect. Then I noticed that I was not the only one there, so it might have been working, but someone else getting them first. :/

Keep in mind that killing a critter doesn't necessarily guarantee the same one (and a battle-able one) will spawn in its place. It's entirely possible that a critter of another kind or a different battle pet will spawn elsewhere.

Another possibility is that each zone can only hold so many wild pets at once. Killing critters might not trigger any wild pets to spawn because the zone is full already.

The best approach to the Irradiated Roach that I've found, is to create a new gnome on different servers. You'll start down below and the roaches can spawn down there too sometimes. It's not exactly the nicest method, since you're pretty much nabbing another servers' (CRZ or not) wild pets, but it gets the job done.

Slerm wrote:The Irradiated Roach. Tons of them fluttering about near the green pools, and plenty more luring in the underground 'Station' outside the Gnomer portals. There are so many running around I started killing the common critters to see if the battle-able pet would spawn. It did not seem to have any effect. Then I noticed that I was not the only one there, so it might have been working, but someone else getting them first. :/

Keep in mind that killing a critter doesn't necessarily guarantee the same one (and a battle-able one) will spawn in its place. It's entirely possible that a critter of another kind or a different battle pet will spawn elsewhere.

Another possibility is that each zone can only hold so many wild pets at once. Killing critters might not trigger any wild pets to spawn because the zone is full already.

The best approach to the Irradiated Roach that I've found, is to create a new gnome on different servers. You'll start down below and the roaches can spawn down there too sometimes. It's not exactly the nicest method, since you're pretty much nabbing another servers' (CRZ or not) wild pets, but it gets the job done.

Oh I fully understand, that I do 'not' fully understand, the mechanics involved. heh

This is entirely why I came here with this particular set of questions. Other peoples' input.

I did not mean to say that I 'expected' my killing of critters to bring forth a herd of battle-able pets. I was just using it as a reference point, for the thread, as to how I came to end up here with these questions. While I was killing endless swarms of Irradiated Roach critters, for science(!), in order to test the theory that killing the critters might open their 'node' to a possible battle-able pet spawn, I thought it might be a better use of my time to come to a community of like-minded collectors, and ask if anyone else had asked this question yet.

I have gotten a lot of things to think about. Zone quotas? Whether the spawn of wild pet 'A' is connected to the spawn/node of wild pet 'B'? Dumb luck?

As an aside, I would like to thank WarcraftPets.com for all the awesome years of being the resource that it is. While I was formulating the questions that I brought here, I did not once have to worry about where I could go to ask such things.